Thursday, July 9, 2009

A while back we purchased the Uncle Milton's Moon In My Room. The idea had been, at the time, to put it up for Lawrence's birthday. He was on the mainland at the time and it was a perfect opportunity to pick it up. The kids ended up giving it to him the day he got home, unaware that it was suppose to wait for his birthday. This little light is very fun to play with. It comes with a remote control where you can adjust the moon through all it's phases waxing, waning, and full. It's also really quite realistic when it's lit up and it's fun to crowd around an empty room and turn the silly thing on. It will be especially fun this week to play with it as the boys are learning about the moon through Space School with Prof. H.

Interestingly enough we decided to pick up the Uncle Milton Star Theater 2 for the Southern Hemisphere this evening. (Our local K-mart carries both of these Uncle Milton toys..) We brought it home and set it up to try out. The boys covered some basic star information last week, including meteors. This handy little gadget comes with an extra "tool" that allows you to make meteors shoot across the ceiling. The boys had fun using it and of course had gobs more questions about meteors because of it. We all had fun laying on the living room floor this evening and staring at the ceiling pointing at various stars. One of our intentions this winter had been to learn some of the constellations in the sky. I'm absolutely no good at this when it comes to the Australian sky because I look up there and don't see a single star I know.

We're in a totally different hemisphere which means even the north star and the big dipper are vacant from my view. However, Lawrence has taught us all how to spot the Southern Cross or Crux, as it's dutifully called on our Star Theater. It will be fun to learn to recognize the stars and then be able to go outside and find them. This will be extra fun in October when we all head out to family camp, all though we may find a few possums attempting to join us..

The really neat thing about the Uncle Milton toys though is that they come with cds. I know, big deal so many things come with cds these days.. Ahh, but these are actually INFORMATIVE cds, which makes them completely worthwhile. You can get a tour of the night sky and the moon. You can plug them in and listen to someone tell you all about the objects your looking at. It makes using your toy a whole lot more interesting when you know what you're doing with it!